Yrae Chronicles

Man it's been a long time since I used this icon. That man has not played cricket in about 15 years.

WE WON THE SHEFFIELD SHIELD!!!

The Sheffield Shield is our domestic long-form cricket competition, which mostly people don't much give a shit about (like they get an attendance of a dozen people through the season) but it is the competition that feeds into the Australian Test team, which is the absolute peak of cricket.

South Australia hasn't won the Sheffield Shield in 29 years. I was 10 the last time we won, and I didn't register it at all. Darren Lehmann, who was babby in that last winning team? His son, Jake, was 3 at the time. Jake was playing in this game. He scored a century in the first innings.

Full context, this has been really building up since we cemented our spot a the top of the ladder and hence hosting the final, which has been like three weeks. Before, even, since like halfway through the season and we were still top of the ladder. Even that is umprecedented. Like still trying not to count chickens etc, but omg hope was ignited. And then we got to host it, holy shit. EXCEPT. Because it's officially footy season now, the AFL decreed they couldn't play it at Adelaide Oval. I mean it's only been the home of cricket in SA for the last 155 years and we haven't hosted the Shield final in almost 30 but fine. FINE. It's FINE. Cricket Australia offered to reschedule it to starting on Monday so it'd have a scheduled finish of yesterday for the footy on Sunday, and the Adelaide Oval staff all said that'd be plenty of time to turn it around from cricket to footy, but nope. AFL said no. Arseholes. The Shield final has always been in March, it's the footy season that keeps getting longer and longer and encroaching on cricket season. We ALLOW you to play on Adelaide Oval in what is still CRICKET SEASON.

So anyway that spat has been dominating headlines since last week, so this final has been in the conscience for a while now. I do wonder if they'd have gotten the same attendance if that controversy hadn't happened. There were like 5000 people there. It was so great.

Anyway.

We'd been pretty much dominating since day one. Yesterday, the Queenslanders fought back somewhat and set us a target today of 270. Tricky in the final innings--the previous record winning run chase was like 200 or something?--and we lost three quick wickets in the first session of the day, but then Carey and Sangha dug in, each made a century, and WE WON. TWENTY NINE YEARS.

As soon as Sangha hit the winning runs, the crowd of about 5000 jumped the picket fence and stormed the ground, swarming the two players as they were laughing and celebrating. We all ran up to the stand where the players all were and waited for presentations. Which. I mean. Normally presentations are done on the ground but, considering how much they've been showing the crowd storming the ground after the 95/96 final win through the week, they really should've expected a pitch invasion. I do hope they prepared for this. Didn't look it but maybe they did, idk. Anyway, they moved all the cameras and presentation stuff up to the balcony, and every new prop that came out got a huge cheer. The Shield itself got a roar like the team had come out because that thing is OURS NOW. For the first time in almost THREE DECADES. The SACA staff who were bringing out all the stuff were laughing every time their movements got cheered. Like, Shield out, big cheer. Carry over to the stand, crowd builds with anticipation, "woahhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH EYYYYYY!!!" It was just so delightful, so much fun, so much excitement from the crowd.

Then the boys came out and they were so happyyyyy just looking out over THOUSANDS of people when they're used to like the echoing claps of like five people. And they each had their chance to raise their hands to the crowd and make us go WOOOO again.

omfg it was so much fun. SO MUCH FUN. I've never stormed the ground before, it was awesome 8D

Hopefully we don't have to wait until Jake Lehmann's son is playing until the next one XD

My ankle is fully functional once more 🥳 I've been walking or running around, so far, three of the parks in the Parklands, with varying levels of interest, but mostly I'm just pleased I can finally use my ankle again and restart my workout. Despite the almost-month off, Garmin is still confident I can achieve the reset goal of 5km in 35 minutes, so that's a relief.

This was a busy weekend! On Saturday morning, caught up with Cassie's friend Maya, who was down for the week-ish, so we went for breakfast down at Brighton then a walk along the beach before it got too arse-bakingly hot. It was already 30°C when I woke up at 8:30 but it was still early enough that the Norfolk Island pines along the beach cast shadows in the beachy direction, so. Coulda been worse?

That evening, Amanda and I went to Orpheus, technically my second show of the Fringe after I won the freebie tix to Tommy's Naughty Forty last week. Orpheus was fantastic. Beautifully written, beautifully told, the little bit of audience participation with a comparatively small audience was so touching and I had a wonderful time 😊

Sunday~ was round 1 of footyball! Wherein Amanda won a free double pass through the Rainbow Crows so I got to go, too =3 We were behind the goals right next to the opposition cheer squad, who were St Kilda (Victoria). Preface: it has not rained since last year. On Wednesday, the forecast for Saturday was 39 with a 70% chance of 5-10mm, which are incongruous in Adelaide. I was dubious, to say the least. By Friday, the 39 hadn't changed but the rain had changed to Sunday, and was now a 70% chance of 0-2mm. By Sunday, it was a 70% chance of <1mm which... idk what that even means. A 70% chance of sweet piss-all? Does that mean a 30% chance of something? (spoilers: no, it doesn't)

So, during the game (which we won by 10 goals, 'spretty sweet), precipitiation started happening. 'Drizzle' would be a lie. 'Spitting' would be generous. When you're standing in the shower and you have that mistiness splashing off of you? That's what started happening. All the Victorians instantly got out their emergency ponchos and waterproof North Faces and being ridiculously prepared for rain. In Adelaide. HAH. None of the South Australians moved, except to knowingly roll our eyes at the Vics and wonder what the hell this weird wet stuff misting down from the sky was. Sure enough, the misting lasted about 20 seconds and that was it. That was our 70% chance of <1mm, not even enough to warrant wiping it off your glasses, it was that nothing.

More importantly, we won a game of footyball! Convincingly! This gives me hope for our season.

While watching, someone mentioned the score at the cricket, wherein we were 5/500-odd. When the footy finished, we'd declared for 600-something and already had two Queensland wickets, so instead of going home we headed up North Terrace to Karen Rolton Oval, during which time the Queenslanders lost another wicket, and turned up in time for the final session of the day. When you've finished watching your South Aussie boys flog some Vics, why not pop across town to wathc your other South Aussie boys flog some Queenslanders? :D Another two wickets fell in the final session of the day and we headed home, promptly forgetting to pop a bottle of Croser for the Crows because it's been so long, whoops.

How has it been over a month? Gdit and I thought I was getting better at this shit. I am better on Insta, so there's that, I guess.

So anyway, somehow it's March already, dunno how that happened so fast, but February went pretty sodding well. Finally got to Chihuly Nights at the Botanic Gardens. It's an exhibition that's been on since October and runs til April, of these massive glass sculptures all around the gardens. I've been several times during the day, because it's just a great place to go for a walk or run after work, but yes, finally got there for the night showing :D The stuff inside the tropical glasshouse was all new to me, since that costs money during the day, and god it's stunning. I mean the whole thing's stunning but... yay new things!

Last weekend we drove to Melbourne to see Green Day! It was SO awesome. Baby's first mosh pit, at the tender young age of 39, aww. Boys were fantastic. It was a bit of an anniversary concert, of their first album, Dookie, 30 years ago; and American Idiot, 20 years ago. They ran through both those albums, track by track, with stuff from the new album last year scattered around, so it wound up being like a 3-hour concert. I last saw them right there back when Marvel Statium was the Telstra Dome back in 2005 (better rundown here on the Adelaide concert, which was earlier that year) and I promise they rocked just as hard as back then. Billie-Joe Armstrong doesn't look like he's aged at all; Mike Dirnt (bass) does look like he's aged about 20 years; Tré Cool (drums) looks like he's aged about 40. BUT LIKE. Drumming is frigging hard work. Mike was often running up and down right in fornt of us and god, that man makes some fun faces <3 I got a couple of them!

The brought up one girl from the mosh pit to give her a mic and sing with Billie-Joe and, after like three seconds of deer-in-headlights panic, it as like she consciously chucked all her inhibitions out the window and just ran with it. She was running up and down the stage, air-guitaring with both the guitarists, also sang really well after the initial fear of holy shit people had been thrown away. Then at the end of her bit, Billie told us all her name was Honey, so of course the crowd started chanting, 'Hon-ey, Hon-ey, Hon-ey!' and it was just a delightful moment :D

Thank you, boys. I did, indeed, have the time of my life 🖤❤️

The final show of the tour was supposed to be this Saturday on the Gold Coast, but um. idk if you've heard but it's a little... breezy... on the Goldie right now. So sadly that one was cancelled :< I feel so sorry for everyone up there, woulda been awesome, obvs.

On Sunday~ we went to Cranbourne Botanic Gardens, which I've been excited to go to for a while now. So many native botanic gardens are planted to look like they do ~in nature~ but like... I already live in the Hills, the bush is literally right there. I don't want to come to a curated garden to see bush, I come to see curated garden. So that's what Cranbourne is, properly architecturally-designed native gardens, and it is stunning. From photos online I've already taken a lot of inspo for the Raykinian royal palace, but seeing it in person is so cool. The red desert one is what you see first walking in, then everything else surround that. I could've spent hours more there, but we got home around midnight as it was, so I'll just have to go again when I go back to Melbourne next. Maybe it won't bloody rain, too :P Seriously, can't remember the last time we had rain in Adelaide* but it was last year, the two-ish days I'm in Melbourne and I get rained on when I'm out in a garden with no shelter. Course, then we started driving home and it was clear blue skies by Horsham. Bloody Melbourne.

I~ have bunged my ankle. This happened last Monday, the week before Green Day, by stepping in someone's footprint wrong in the wet sand on the beach. It's not bad but has just enough of a twinge that it's clearly warning me not to do more than like stand on it. Clearly walking is out. Running 10km? HAH. So I have disappointingly not done any fitness since last Monday. I'm so pissed off. I was doing so well! Running was starting to actually flow and feel natural. Doing the fitness literally every day, even on both days of the weekend, had become just a normal thing I do. I was excited to see the little wheel of confidence (how confident my Garmin app is that I can achieve my goal) go up and up and break from the green Confident range into the purple Very Confident, Maybe You Should Make Your Goal More Ambitious range. I got my VO2 Max, which is a key number for fitness, go from 32 up to 34, just this year! One more point and I'll be up from Poor into Fair! I could even become Good! Not Excellent cos that's the realm of elite athletes and shit knows I can't be bothered with that.

But all because of a bung ankle, that's just stopped. I can pause the actual training app, the one that tells me different running things to do each day, but that doesn't stop my actual body and fitness from going backwards. SO miffed. It's feeling much better just today, no swelling when I got home from work, which is a change, so I'm hoping by Sunday I'll be able to start working back up to doing fitness again. I'm not letting this slide, not this time. I've been doing so well and feeling so good about it, I won't drop it.

I've submitted four stories to various competitions, which I believe all start judging this month? So it'll be exciting to see if they go anywhere. First time submitting to competitions, I don't expect to, but it's still exciting!

Limes were $4.50 for a bag so cosmo's for cocktail hour tonight when Amanda gets home 🍸

OH and Sculptures by the Sea, that was in Feb, too. See, I'm good at Insta!

OH OH and I won a thing! Just on a whim I entered a radio contest to go see Tommy Little's Naughty Fortieth, which is basically part of the Fringe in the Garden of Unearthly Delights, and I won! It was a lot of fun =3 Opened with a stripper Fringe performer who uses FIRE and she was awesome. Then Tommy Little and Carrie Bickmore, who are said radio show, plus three comedian Fringe performers in Luke McGreggor, Ivan Aristaguierta (who is Venueulan and awesome) and Ross Noble came up to play Tommy's card game. Ross waid he got the single most Fringe experience ever, cos they didn't see the opening fire boobies act, but he was backstage. So what he got was this extremely hot, semi-naked woman (she had star nipple stickers and a gstring) wandering around with a giant cannister of parafin under her arm. 'No idea what the show was but it looks like fun!' XD That is indeed the most Fringey thing I've ever heard and I'm so pleased he had that experience X3 And he's been doing Fringe for frigging decades by this point. Ross Noble and Arj Barker are like the unofficial mascots. I LOVE THE FRINGE. And then walking back up Rundle Street to get back to the car, street closed with lights up everywhere, tables and chairs from the restaurants all out on the road, and this at like 11:30 on a Tuesday night. It's just such a fun, vibrant time to live here. Got another, this time paid, show happening next weekend, so excited for that one, too X3

All right now that's everything. Probably.


* If I don't even need to turn my windscreen wipers on, it's not rain. Also for the record, even that's only happened twice this year.

Amanda's started a new job, well, end of last year, but this month it's been on what will be regular hours, which are the late shift at a flour mill, meaning she gets home around 11ish. I go to bed at 10, 10:30, which is kinda suck but also I get my me time? Which is nice. Currently catching up on all the YouTube videos I've fallen way behind on XD; And I can go back to making dinner once or twice and just having the same thing all week. Do miss having her cooking tho, and sportsball is always better to watch with someone. And seeing craft projects grow and come to life. The ideal would be like 2-3 days a week, but she does get home earlier on a Friday and I can stay up later, so it's not a total loss.

I've discovered a feature on my Garmin wherein I can set a fitness target and it'll give me fitness to do so I can achieve it. My ultimate goal is running jetty to jetty in an hour, currently takes me about an hour and 10 mins and it's just shy of 9km round trip. So I told the watch I want to do 10km in 1hr 10mins (it's 5km or 10km then it goes up to a marathon. HAH) and it said you'll be struggling to do that in the time frame. So I went to 5km in half an hour. You'll be struggling to do that in the time frame. 35 minutes? You'll be struggling--SCREW YOU. So it's at the longest possible time it can train me for, 37:30, which I'll be doing on ANZAC Day (25 April). I can currently do 5km in 38:40 so yay, I'll be carving off a whole minute 10 seconds in three and a half months. See if it'll let me try for 5km in half an hour after that .-.

I've finished my first short story, 4000 words about a guy in a Kazinian prison where the cells aren't walls and cages, but deep pits which you get out of by growing a tree from a seed. Not yet entered cos I want to read it again with fresher eyes before the deadline and see if I can improve anything, so if anyone wants to join me on this journey of short story competition entries please let me know! I'd love all the concrit I can muster 💚 The next one is proving difficult. 1000 words about alchemy. I've got something in my brain about an alchemist losing their license because they're making dodgy gems but it's just not happening. It's been a looooong time since I've written anything short. 1000 words is like one scene. Maybe two at a stretch. Fleh.

Garden continues to thrive despite heatwave. It's not attrocious (aside from the 39 on Sunday, that sucked) but it sure is lasting. My tank ran out of water yesterday so we're on tap water now, boo :< Adelaide tap water, ftr, tastes chlorinated and bad. There's a cyclone going on off WA so cross fingers we get dumped on at some point, but it's so far been a normal-arse January with no rain (we got like 3mm two weeks ago and that's been it) so I'm not holding out hope. Filtered tap water it is, ew. Anyway. The garden's happy it gets water at regular intervals now so that's good. The dichondra (ground cover) is already starting to spread out so I'm particularly excited to see how that goes.

OKAY had thoughts while running. Cos it was 49 minutes and I can't help but think and plan and plot and whatever.

SO.

I'll edit the Silent Harmony two chapters I've got written, then I'll call it done*.

Next year, I'll enter some competitions and hunt down some publications and such, write shorts and have fun.

Then I'll do Novelember again, this time something with the aim of actually getting it published. I'm thinking something with a fortune teller, cos I really need to properly nut out how all that works and that'd be helpful. Then spend a good chunk of time getting it looking gorgeous and tight and fling it around at every publishing house I can think of and see if I can get it published. Maybe art for it through the year and get a following on Tumblr/other arting places? idk. Hard when I'm not an arteest.

Maybe then, by 2026, I'll be ready to make a call on SH. Cos shit knows I can't write it while nobody's reading it. I can't express how much my hope just fizzled and died when I opened the file at lunch time today.



* for now

Find you a girlfriend who'll cruise the suburb with you at night finding those last couple of raids you need on Pokémon Go to finish the quest line 💚

ALSO. Useless finishing workmate so close to being sacked I can taste it. Watching him just implode on himself this week has been the most beautiful example of schaudenfreude, it's just *chef's kiss*

I feel like I'm screaming into the void and not getting so much as an echo back.

I finished all the art for the Big Book of Stuff. Should be a moment of celebration, but I haven't even hung up the balloons and streamers because I knew nobody would show up.

Words and art are all I have on the internet. If nobody--literally nobody--has commented on any of the art in over a year, why bother with the words?

VACCINE BOOKED. FINALLY. My state opened it up to everyone over 16 today. There was one appointment available tomorrow when I started booking, but it was gone by the time I finished, so October it is. BUT I'M IN. WOO.

I was heading home on Wednesday and Jon asked if I was still taking this week off.

'Um... nooo?'

'I think you probably should. You've got a bit of leave piling up there.'

'Yeah, cos I keep booking holidays to Sydney that get cancelled by Covid.'

So I'm off this week. I plan to park myself in a café every day and writing a lot. Today I finished a chapter and wrote a page and a half of the next one and it was awesome. My laptop used about 20% of its battery for the whole time I was there. Going to a café and not looking for the table with a powerpoint is glorious. This thing still needs a name, tho. Something'll come up I'm sure.

Kinda want to book a night somewhere up in the Hills or down on the South Coast buuuut it's winter. But it's also my birthday. Going somewhere for a night would be lovely. But it's winter. Eh.

WELP all my pride of being the state that never actually went into lockdown has just dropped off a cliff. As of midnight, it's just me and the cat for the next six days, and then we'll see what happens.

For context, we got our first community case since April on Sunday, four new cases. Monday there were 17 and SA Health hit panic stations. Yesterday there were four and today there were two. It's linked to hotel quarrantine, specifically a cleaner who's had no contact with the guests, so they suspect they picked it up by touching a surface.

I'm scared! I'm scared that we've had to do this, but at the same time I'm pleased we've gone this hard to early. When Victoria exploded, they fartarsed around for, like, a month before they bit the bullet and shut everything down. SA Health not taking ANY chances. They're being paranoid of everything and I am okay with that. I'm scared, but I have a lot of state pride right now. All the other state premiers and epidemiologists and such are praising our government and SA Health, and in turn Marshall and St Nicola are praising us. They're going with the carrot not stick method, telling us they trust us all to do the right thing and praising everyone for going to get tested, all the associated businesses for having their Covid-safe plans.

It's such a wild contrast to Victoria, where DAndrews took forever to really do anything and then enforced his restrictions with fines of many thousands of dollars. All stick, no carrot, and that was a big reason why shit got so bad over the border.

I'm scared, but we're not going to be Victoria.

IN NICOLA WE TRUST.